1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system in which a printing control apparatus is connected to an image processing apparatus configured to perform power saving control, a control method of the printing control apparatus, and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, transitioning of an image processing apparatus to a sleep status has been performed by the following method. Time until transition to the sleep status is set at the image processing apparatus beforehand, and upon an idle status of the image processing apparatus passing the set time, the image processing apparatus is automatically transitioned to the sleep status.
However, access to the image processing apparatus, being executed at the printing control apparatus side, has to be stopped in order for the image processing apparatus to which the printing control apparatus is connected to be transitioned to the sleep status. Therefore, it is necessary for the image processing apparatus to notify the printing control apparatus that transition to the sleep status will be performed (hereinafter, sleep preparation completion notification), transition to the sleep status after receiving a response thereof (hereinafter, sleep status start instruction), and to prevent returning from the sleep status as long as there is no transmission of a job or the like.
However, if the image processing apparatus notifies the printing control apparatus of the sleep preparation completion notification, and the printing control apparatus immediately returns the sleep status start instruction back to the image processing apparatus, there is the possibility that a job will be transmitted from the printing control apparatus to the image processing apparatus immediately after transitioning to the sleep status.
Once a job is transmitted from the printing control apparatus to the image processing apparatus, and the image processing apparatus returns from the sleep status, the image processing apparatus is prevented from transitioning to the sleep status again until a predetermined amount of time elapses, from a viewpoint of hard disk protection and so forth. If the processing of the job triggering the return from the sleep status is quickly completed, the image processing apparatus has to maintain an activated status with no processing being performed. Accordingly, a situation occurs wherein it is difficult to obtain expected power saving effects.
Therefore, there has been proposed a technique wherein, in a case where there is a job of which the processing point-in-time has been specified, processing of the job is performed consecutively after the job previously being processed, and thereafter, an image processing apparatus is transitioned to the sleep status, thereby reducing the number of times of transition to the sleep status (e.g., see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-220742).
However, the above existing technique does not take into consideration jobs that do not have to be processed at the image processing apparatus, and accordingly, the following problem occurs.
In a case where there are a great number of jobs in those already scheduled to be processed that do not have to be processed at the image processing apparatus, there will be no input of a job from the printing control apparatus, and the image processing apparatus continuously awaits the sleep start instruction though no processing is being executed. As a result, electric power is wasted until the image processing apparatus is transitioned to the sleep status.